A reporter who accused Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway of “being so dismissive of me” during an interview said she received an apology from the star.
Norwegian entertainment journalist Kjersti Flaa recently went viral for calling out actress Blake Lively’s reaction to one of her questions during an interview, and this week got a lot of attention for what she labeled her “bad” interview with Hathaway. Newsweek contacted Flaa and Hathaway’s representatives by email for comment.
Flaa has long interviewed celebrities and began recounting her experiences on her social-media channels, including YouTube.
A recent video showed snippets of the press junket in 2012 for the Academy Award-winning musical movie Les Misérables, where she interviewed its many stars, including Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Eddie Redmayne and Hathaway.
In the video, Flaa criticized Hathaway for not being very responsive to her questions, including opening the interview by saying she would sing her questions to the actress, whom the interviewer encouraged to reply in song.
“Well, I won’t be doing that, but you’re more than welcome to sing,” Hathaway replied at the time, and also gave one-word answers to some of Flaa’s questions.
The video received more than 171,000 views, and, days later, Hathaway wrote to the journalist to apologize for the interview, which Flaa had described as “cringe.”
“I have to say, I was pretty shocked,” Flaa said in her latest YouTube video where she added that Hathaway’s publicist reached out on behalf of the Hollywood star.
“I had not expected her to reach out to me at all. I thought she was never going to even see that video, but she did and she did something pretty amazing.”
Flaa said that Hathaway told her in the email of what she had been going through at the time of the interview and said sorry for “giving an awful interview,” and that hearing from the actress was “so touching to me.”
“Just talking about it makes me almost teary-eyed. I was just so grateful that she did that,” Flaa said.
“It was a very personal note, and we decided that I wouldn’t share exactly what was in the email, but I just wanted to share with you guys what she did because I thought that was just so amazing.”
Flaa then made an offer to Hathaway, “if you ever want to sit down and talk about it, I’m here,” and said she was invited to interview The Princess Bride star next May.
“I have so much respect for people who own up to their mistakes and say they’re sorry. Sorry is such a powerful word,” the reporter added. “It was a long time ago now; I have no hard feelings about it.”
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